Does your job suit your personality?

In career terms, there isn’t a type of job to match your personality type, but some roles will be easier or feel more natural to you than others because they play to your strengths.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a way of assessing your personality and finding out about your preferred or most natural ways of behaving. It is used more widely within career counselling and in work based training and development activities than in the recruitment world.

According to the Myers-Briggs test, there are 16 different types of personalities. The test consists of a series of questions, and your answers determine what type of personality you have providing general assumptions about how your personality type is best suited for success in terms of careers, communication, etc.

It is based on Carl Jung’s theory that all humans are either introverts or extroverts and that their behaviour follows from these unborn psychological types. He believed people take in and process information different ways based on their personality traits.

The test is commonly used in many different business-oriented settings, including: Leadership development, Team building, Screening and interviewing employees, Career selection and Personal development. The test itself is made up of four different scales:

(E) Extraversion or Introversion (I)

(S) Sensing or Intuition (I)

(T) Thinking or Feeling (F)

(J) Judging or Perceiving (P)

Myers-Briggs has been used for decades, but it is commonly criticized as a “soft” tool that produces results that aren’t always relevant enough to be applied fully in business and career settings. But despite the criticism, the Myers-Briggs test offers a lot of value for small business owners and freelancers who want to learn more about themselves and identify potential opportunities for greater success, provided the results are taken with a grain or two of salt.